enery, was playing "I Shall Dream of You the Whole Night." Peals of
light laughter and ripples of talk came from a gay-looking group of
frocks--with just one man's coat amongst them--gathered around a table
near the band.

I noticed that the eyes of everybody within earshot were turning
constantly towards this table. So I looked, too.

At whom were they all staring? At a plump, bright-haired woman in
all-white, who was obviously entertaining the party--to say nothing of
the rest of the room.

She had a figure that demanded a good deal of French lingerie blouse,
but not much skirt. The upright feather in her hat was yellow; jewelled
slides glittered in her brass-bright hair; her eyes were round and very
black.

She reminded me of a sulphur-crested, white cockatoo I had seen at the
Zoo.

But where had I seen her before? She puzzled and fascinated me. I stood
a little way off, forgetting my errand, watching this vivacious lady,
the centre of the group. She was waving her cigarette to punctuate her
remarks----

"Oh, young Jim's one of the best--the very best, my dears. Tiptop family
and all. Who says blood doesn't tell, Leo? Ah! he's a good old pal o'
mine, is the Hon. Jim Burke, specially on Fridays (treasury day, my
dear); but it's the Army I'm potty about myself. The Captain (and dash
the whiskers), that's the tiger that puts Leo and his lot in the
shade----"

Here followed a wave of the cigarette towards the only man of the party.
He was stout and astrachan-haired; a Jew even from the back view.

"Give me the military man, what, what," prattled on the cockatoo lady,
whose cigarette seemed to spin a web about her of blue floating smoke
wisps. "That's the boy that makes a hole in Vi's virgin heart!"

A fan-like gesture of her left hand, jewelled to the knuckles, upon the
spread of the lady's embroidered blouse emphasised this declaration.

"Them's the fellers! Sons of the Empire--or of the Alhambra!" wound up
the cockatoo lady with a rollicking laugh.

And as she laughed I caught her full face and the flash of a line of
prominent, fascinatingly white teeth that lighted up her whole
expression as a white wave lights up the whole shore.

Then I knew where I'd seen her before--in a hundred theatrical posters
between the Hotel Cecil and the Bond Street tea-shop that I had just
left. Yes, I'd seen this lady's highly coloured portrait above the
announcement:

MISS VI VASSITY,